Monthly Archives: June 2007

Ah, wonderful wonderful procrastination. I’m finally ready to do my system recovery, after which my Sony Vaio VGN-SZ460N laptop should finally act like the state-of-the-art computer it’s supposed to be – Sony only makes one ‘better’ laptop, and it seems to come down to the casing materials. In my last scan of links while completing my backup (my third, this one to my Seagate FreeAgent 160), I saw this article over on PC World.

Even now, I still won’t call myself anti-Microsoft or anti-Sony, but it’s amazing to me how two companies, the utterly dominant leaders in their respective industries, can so easily let their customer base slip away. I was told recently by an industry expert that Mac laptops now represent 10% of the laptop market. Personally, I don’t need to see another commercial to know how close I’ve gotten to switching. In fact, if I hadn’t been told by my office full of Macheads that Leopard is worth waiting for, I’d probably consider it quite strongly right now.

I predict that this January (if not sooner) Apple ships an ultra-thin laptop (along with 1-2 more iPhone models – iPhone Nano is a guarantee in my eyes). At the pace I’m going with my Vaio, I’ll
be ready to camp out in line for a few days to get one.

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So I went reading through a few stories of iPhone lines, ranging from Scoble to Engadget to Ars Technica and more (full list to follow). In these posts, stories are shared of lines ranging from 20 to 200 people in cities such as San Francisco, Palo Alto, Cincinnati, Tampa Bay, and New York, and they’ve been there for hours to days. Using just a little bit of math, the 11 cities I tracked represented 8790 person-hours of line-waiting. With 140 Apple stores nationwide (not even counting AT&T stores, by the way), this represents 7.8% of all stores. A tiny bit of extrapolation later and we have 111872 person-hours spent waiting in line (including Zooomr’s Kris Tate in live video, and the mayor of Philadelphia). The totals:111872 person-hours.

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First, to get the mandatory coverage out of the way: iPhone line. Ah, I feel better now.

A friend of mine told me he has adopted the “10% of JT” rule to digital “stuff”. I took ~400 pictures in the first 2 days when my son was born, he took 40. I’ve ripped over 600 of my CDs, he’s still not at 60 (but making progress). I think he’s way behind in the video realm, but I’m still just getting started over there.

What it’s really made me think about is the ability I have to truly chronicle the life of my child. I take pictures or video almost every day now, even if it’s just him in the crib or on his playmat. I managed to capture one of his first smiles in video (the real ones, not just the gas). When I talk to my parents about my upbringing, I quickly understand the advantage the digital world gives me. I’ll never ‘wonder’ what my child looked like at 2 days, 2 months, or 2 years.

The other amazing part of it is the ability to share with my family, located around the world. His 94-year-old great-grandmother gets my Flickr updates once a week, and she’s seen a video I made as well (of him sucking on his mother’s nose – quite adorable). My parents and in-laws are able to take the pictures and print them with Shutterfly or other services. I’ll gladly out-digital people by 1000%, it’s worth every megabyte.
But best of all will be the chance to show all these memories to my son when he’s older. And, of course, to every girl he ever dates.

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So I kinda, well, chickened out today. I did my entire backup – twice actually, once on my office Drobo, the other on my home Maxtor NAS. As an aside, I’d like to give a special big heartfelt “thank you” to the folks at Norton Security Center who found a way to protect me by preventing me from finding my NAS on my home network for an hour or so. The helpfulness and security I now bask in is wonderful. Yes, the sarcasm is at an all-time high right now.

Anyhow, I’m still in my awkward Vista stage, and was trying to get a video I captured yesterday for a friend of mine online. Windows Media Player is crashing on me, so I tried using one of the built-in Sony applications to preview the video clip I made. Here’s the error I saw:

Ok, fess up. I’m on candid camera, right? Right?

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Sometime last week I had come to the conclusion that either my new Vaio VGN-SZ460N is a lemon, or Vista is utterly terrible, or somewhere in between. On Monday night while talking to Michael Gartenberg (who’s spent more time with Vista and Vaios and everything else known to man and computing), he concurred that while Sony isn’t exactly known for high quality drivers, my experiences were, in a word, subpar.

By the way – iPhone.

After hearing enough Apple Geniuses stories (with the exception apparently of when you just walk into the store and try to buy a computer, at which point they no longer retain ‘genius’ status in my eyes, but I digress), yesterday I decided I’d put Sony to the task. Called support, held, held, held, held more, held, talked to someone, escalated, held, held, escalated, held, got on the phone with a specialist. Ahh. Specialist.

This guy (coincidentally named Jeremy – sweet) really did have a good grasp on the situation. Didn’t try to duck and cover. Didn’t have me waste time with a defrag or other clearly unnecessary step. His hunch was one of the following issues:

Bad motherboard

Bad RAM

Bad Vista load

After some diagnostics last night, it’s apparently not the RAM. And while it could be the motherboard, I don’t really want to wait the 7-10 days, nor pay $150 for on-site support. Supposedly some SonyStyle stores will get their own geniuses too sooner or later, but I’m not one for patience. So reloading Vista is the path I’ll try – I actually did have a quirky bootup the first time I turned on the PC, which apparently can knock the self-install for a loop, so hopefully that’s all the fix I need.
So, I’m doing my backup to my Drobo right now, and will follow up with a full System Recovery later this morning.

ps – The reason I wrote ‘iPhone’ above is apparently Congress recently passed a law that stated all blog posts made in the month of June must in some way reference the iPhone. Didn’t want to get in trouble…

So maybe I’m missing something, but I would think anyone who has a budget for a $599 cell phone probably isn’t so price-sensitive about their service plans. Although I guess all the kids who’ve saved their allowances for it might find it an incentive. I see this type of stuff all the time with my consulting work. Companies who have a great product/technology/service, but don’t seem to focus on the key messaging to actually sell the product/technology/service. I always look to TiVo’s early marketing campaigns as my pseudo-case study.

TiVo launched in 1999 with a huge marketing campaign (rumored above $50 million – huge for a startup!), focused almost exclusively around one key message: pause live TV. I still remember the first time I saw the ads (TV ones too), which, as a TiVo owner, confused the heck out of me. Here’s the thing – it turns out nobody really cares about pausing live TV, it doesn’t make much sense to a non-TiVo person, and even then it’s just a fringe benefit. There are two features that I think TiVo could’ve worked with and gotten much better results:

Instant Replay – “Miss that shot? TiVo puts you in charge of the Instant Replay!”

Season Pass – “No need to manage piles of blank tapes, TiVo’s Season Pass records all of your favorite shows, no hassle required.”

Overall, the iPhone marketing team has done quite a good job. Then again, the iMicrowave, iLunchbox, and iCeramicPotterySet would probably generate just as much buzz too. I just like to keep my eyes out for when companies misalign their target market, their key benefits and value proposition, and their messaging…

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At the time of writing, I have 85 friends on Facebook. A good dozen or so are people I will likely never interact with again. Another dozen are people I’ve met once, maybe twice, and unless they’re also in LinkedIn with me, I doubt I’d even have their contact information. I’ve gotten friend requests from people I’ve truly never met, but we seem to have someone in common. So what exactly is it that makes us Friends?

A few weeks back, Dave Winer wrote a post that I very much agree with, complaining about the types of relationshps available when people befriend one another. My complaint is at a much more basic level – I don’t really like using the term ‘friend’ so casually.

In my world, a friend is someone I can call (or IM or text or Twitter), in times both good and bad, and know they’ll be there to lend an ear. I mock Twitter above, and one of the reasons comes back down to my view of friendship – my friends know what I’m doing and don’t need to find out my updates from some Web site or service. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people I’m friendly with, but just because I’ve established a positive, non-stranger relationship doesn’t mean we are BFFs.

Clearly on the other side of the fence of this kind of topic is Robert Scoble, who is currently accepting friendships with anyone out there (for now). Again, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this, but it does make me crave a new word to use for contacts, acquaintances, associates, and other people I “know”.

I enjoy plenty of friendly relationships, and look forward to making many more in this journey called life. I hope for everyone’s sake that twenty years from now people seek more from each other than writing on walls, tagging photos, and the occasional poke. Well, that one’s not so bad now, is it?

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I’d characterize myself as a fairly ambitious guy. I’ve either started or been on the ground floor of about 6 companies (not including the two I tried to kick off in high school). At present I have my about-to-be-named consumer technology product marketing consulting business (that’s a mouthful), two Web services startups, this blog, my not-so-biweekly Engadget column, and, most importantly, my wife and new baby to take care of.

Pruning that list somewhat still leaves me with no fewer than four, and as many as six, recurring writing outlets (here, Engadget, the aren’t-I-clever-by-using-hyphens-to-mask-my-unnamed-company blog, and at least one of the Web services startups’ blogs). Additionally, a lot of the client work I do has me writing numerous documents.

So the question comes down to how to prioritize and focus on the blogging. I have a bunch of ideas or even half-written posts about gadget marketing issues and suggestions – but I now want to keep those on ice until the ok-the-hyphen-thing-is-now-annoying company blog goes live. I’d like to do some writing here on “what it’s like to build consumer electronics” but I don’t really have enough topics to keep me going, and I don’t know how compelling that is as a reader anyway. I have a backlog of gadgets to review, but they are extremely time-consuming, and these days there are so many others doing the same thing, I feel it’s harder and harder to stand out. This leaves the ol’ LD in a bit of an awkward spot – any suggestions from the crowd?

With all this writing, it’s somewhat ironic that I got booted out of the honors English classes back in high school, don’t ya think?

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I was reading my daily news over at the ol’ Tennessean, and saw that EMI is claiming their DRM-free tracks on iTunes are selling well. Another (possibly untrustworthy) source claims:

Since EMI ditched the DRM on iTunes it has seen sales of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon increase by between 272 and 350 percent

This is an excellent sign. With the massive increase in power to conglomerates (in every industry, actually), the only real way consumers have to voice their preferences is with their checkbook PayPal account. Plus it’s a lot more “friendly” than waiting to deal with lawsuits from the RIAA.

If you believe, like many of us do, that DRM is eviler than Google, I can only recommend two paths:

Write your congressperson

Buy a DRM-free track for $0.99

Pick whichever one you find easier, and, as the swoosh says, just do it.

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I saw my first Vista demo last summer during a partners briefing/demo day. It looked awesome. Sure it’s “inspired” by OS X, but the two have gone back and forth “sharing” for years anyway, and that’s not a bad thing. Vista looked like a much-improved XP, with a focus on better security, better networking, and an overall better experience.

I had absolutely no intention of doing an upgrade from XP, but figured I’d sooner-or-later get a new laptop with Vista pre-installed. That’d make the perfect solution – I would get the best of both worlds. I figured, hey, when’s the next time I’ll be in Haiti?

My brand new laptop, as in the one that came with Vista pre-installed, shipped with out-of-date drivers. Let me see if that point is clear enough here. I bought a laptop, in the store, took it home, turned it on. Wrong drivers. Imagine buying a car, at a dealer, and they left the wrong tires on it.

It’s taken me a couple of weeks, but now I can proudly say that my brand-spanking-new laptop no longer crashes when I close the lid, nor do I lose the right-mouse button for hours on end. Anymore.

Clearly my productivity is at an all-time high.

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Over the past few years I’ve landed onto more and more PR firms’ press lists, which generally means I get a lot of press releases I don’t really care much about. Frankly, a lot of those releases just aren’t intended for me, but it’s all a numbers game (for both sides, really, and I’m still waiting for more PR firms to act upon my blogger pr tips). Rarely do I receive releases from the government that grab my attention. Today was one of those grabs.

Headline:

United States Patent and Trademark Office Begins Pilot Program to Open Patent Examination Process for Online Public Participation

Key details:

the USPTO announced that this pilot program to test the value of public participation in the patent examination process will run for one year.

The custom-designed Web site facilitates:

review and discussion of posted patent applications

sharing of research to locate references to relevant earlier publications

submission of these prior art references with an explanation of relevance

annotating and evaluating submitted prior art

winnowing of top ten prior art references, which, together with commentary, will be forwarded to the USPTO

patent education to inform public participation

forwarding of public submissions directly to the USPTO for consideration

The goal of opening up the examination process for public participation is to enable better decision making by the patent examiner and improve patent quality.

Kudos to the USPTO for taking some cues from the burgeoning citizen journalism industry. Hm, “industry” is probably the wrong word, but that’s not important right now.

The site is fairly impressive. Lots of community features, well beyond just forums (ah yes, another online profile). After reading through a few patents and their discussions, I certainly hope that this process might help “Englishize” patents a bit more, as they are still as abstract as ever. I fear this’ll be the big obstacle to prevent more communal participation. I wonder if they too will make a Facebok plug-in? I certainly think that’s more useful than their integration with SecondLife!

There’s a ton of griping these days about how much reform is needed in the patent process. Here’s a chance for all the gripers to show their character. Get involved. Click here to share your voice in a new kind of P2P, they call it Peer to Patent (more about them here).

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I still don’t quite understand the key motivators that’ll drive iPhone sales, but I do agree that they’ll be selling a boatload. Assuming there’s no big price drop, I don’t see them moving 10 million in year one (nor 45 million in 2009, come on!), but somewhere in the 4-6 million certainly seems right to me in comparison with a worldwide smartphone market of 113 million units this year. Then again, since the experts themselves seem to argue about whether the market is going up or down, who knows how big the market really is?

One thing that’s for sure is there’s a chunk of people with a fever, and that fever can only be cured by one thing: iPhone. They want it, and want it bad. Americans today have a lot more gadget lust than years ago, and are willing to pitch tents, camp out, and overpay for their “gottahaveits”. When the Xbox 360 launched in North America, it sold out within hours, and was on eBay for ridiculous prices. A former coworker of mine managed to get 4 Premium units and sold two for $2500 each, but the record was apparently set at $10,400. Here are a few predictions I’ll make:

They will not have 3 million units ready by June 29th. The lead-times to build such high-quality, customized hardware are probably 8-12 weeks, and they’re probably still wrapping up the final software release now, which doesn’t give them enough QA time to load it on all the devices AND ship them to their distribution centers AND ship them to AT&T stores, all of which is not quite overnight.

Diehards will be seen camping out outside of stores as soon as the 24th. Photos will be taken, put online, and Dugg within hours. Despite a “6pm local time” statement, by the night of the 28th, I predict no fewer than 50% of all locations stocking iPhones will have one camper.

Major metropolitan areas will be sold out within 30 minutes, and few, if any, units will be available by close of business on the 29th. I doubt we’ll see shootings, but there’ll be no fewer than 3 fights on record nationwide. I’ll give a slight outside chance on one AT&T store being vandalized by frustrated customers.

The first wave of public dissatisfied grumpiness will start one week after launch, and steadily increase. There’s so much hype and the expectations are just too high. Don’t get me wrong, this won’t be a bomb like the last time Apple was involved in a phone, but I anticipate backlash. My belief is that human nature shows that people root for the underdog, but turn on a winner, and Apple’s moved into the ‘winner’ camp of late. I do predict that the iPhone will have higher return rates than anything else both Apple and AT&T sell (at present).

Expect heavy eBay gouging for iPhones for the first month. Yes, you’ll need to be in contract, but still, they’re comfortable enough betting on AT&T customers, so there’s nothing to prevent someone from signing up, paying out the cancellation fee (or just transferring service to another phone), then selling out the unit online. Assuming I’m correct about unit shortages for the first week-to-month, I think we’ll see some skyrocketing on eBay, and I’ve polled around some peers for their opinions as well:

Jeremy Toeman: $5000 will be the record price for an iPhone sold on eBay.

Michael Gartenberg (Jupiter analyst): “you’ll see units with an asking price of 3k and more than a few sold at $1,000 or above”

Dave Zatz (tech blogger and Sling Media employee): “due to a two year contract, if the price points hold the same for both the new *and* current customers, there won’t be much of an initial aftermarket ”

Ben Drawbaugh (EngadgetHD writer): “if there wasn’t the 3 million units rumour out there, I would say about 700, but I think there might actually be enough to go around, but I’m not good at predicting these types of things”

Ross Rubin (NPD analyst): “availability is still unknown but, if it approaches the level of consoles during last year’s holiday, I’d guess $2,500 to $3,000.”

Kevin Tofel (Managing Editor, jkOnTheRun): “The new math: how many ebay Wii’s will equal one iPhone. I say three.”

There you have it. We’ll see who’s right and wrong in the coming months. Either way, they’ve done a heck of a job building buzz and hype. Now it’s time for sales.

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About

Jeremy Toeman is VP Products for CNET. He has over 15 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, smart TV and consumer technology. Prior ventures and projects include Viggle, Dijit Media, Sling Media, VUDU, Clicker, DivX, Rovi, Mediabolic, Boxee, and many other consumer technology companies. This blog represents nothing but his personal opinion and outlook on things.